FIRST PRINCIPLES
FO U NDAT I O NA L CO N C E P TS TO G U I D E P O L I T I C S A N D P O L I CY
MAKERS OF AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT
NO. 09 | June 4, 2013
Ronald Reagan: Conservative Statesman
Steven F. Hayward
R
onald Reagan, the 40th President of the United
States, is perhaps the second most popular and
consequential Republican President after Abraham
Lincoln. Like Lincoln, the Great Emancipator,
Reagan’s careful rhetorical style proved deeply persuasive to the American people and earned him the
name of “Great Communicator.”
Elected during a moment of national self-doubt
and economic stagnation in 1980, he is credited
with reviving the national economy, recovering the
nation’s optimism about the future, and taking the
pivotal steps to end the long Cold War struggle with
the Soviet Union. His background as a Hollywood
actor before entering politics, his idiosyncratic conservatism, and his age (he was the oldest person
elected to the presidency) mark him as an extraordinary figure among conservatives and among all of
our Presidents, making him a model to be studied
closely and emulated by conservatives today and in
the future.
This paper, in its entirety, can be found at
http://report.heritage.org/MAPT-09
Produced by the B. Kenneth Simon Center
for Principles and Politics
The Heritage Foundation
214 Massachusetts Avenue, NE
Washington, DC 20002
(202) 546-4400 | heritage.org
Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views
of The Heritage Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of
any bill before Congress.
Early Life
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6,
1911, in Tampico, Illinois, the son of struggling salesman Jack Reagan, prone to alcoholism, and a devout
mother, Nelle Reagan, who belonged to the Disciples
of Christ denomination. Reagan moved frequently
around small Illinois towns as a young child as his
father struggled to find steady work, and he acquired
much of his religious sensibilities from his mother.
Several biographers have traced Reagan’s personal
reserve to his frequent moves as a youth as well as
his difficult relations with his alcoholic father.
After settling eventually in Dixon, Reagan
attended Eureka College, a Disciples of Christ–affiliated liberal arts college in Illinois, where he majored
in economics and sociology. He also played football
and took up drama, his future career. He had a reputation as a B and C student, prompting him to joke
during his presidency that he was more interested in
sports and drama than his classes and that “I often
wonder how far I might have gone in life if I had only
studied harder.”1
Following graduation in 1932, Reagan found a
series of jobs in radio broadcasting in Iowa, where
a stint as a Chicago Cubs broadcaster led him to
accompany the team to spring training in California
in 1937. While in California, he took a screen test
and was signed to a contract with Warner Brothers.
Although known as a star of “B” movies, Reagan
became one of the most popular actors with the
public and starred in a few memorable or critically
MAKERS OF AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT | NO. 09
June 4, 2013
Ronald Reagan
Born
February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, to John Edward Reagan and Nelle Wilson Reagan.
Education
Graduated with a B.A. in economics and sociology from Eureka College (Illinois) in 1932.
Religion
Disciples of Christ.
Family
I n 1940, married actress Jane Wyman (b. 1917), with whom he had two children: Maureen (b. 1941) and
an adopted son, Michael (b. 1945). They divorced in 1949, and in 1952, he married Nancy Davis (b. 1921),
with whom he had two children: Patti (b. 1952) and Ron Jr. (b. 1958).
Highlights
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Radio announcer, WOC radio, University of Iowa, and WHO radio, Des Moines (1932–1937).
Army Enlisted Reserve (1937).
Actor, Warner Brothers Studio (1937). Eventually appeared in 57 movies.
First lieutenant, U.S. Army (1943–1945).
Board member, Screen Actors Guild (1941).
President, Screen Actors Guild (1947–1952, 1959).
Host, General Electric Theater (1954–1962).
Governor of California (1967–1975).
40th President of the United States (1981–1989).
Died
June 5, 2004, at his home in Bel Air, California.
Last Words
“I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will
always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.”
acclaimed movies, including Knute Rockne: All
American and Kings Row. He married one of the
leading starlets of the time, actress Jane Wyman,
in 1940.
World War II interrupted his film career. Reagan
served as an Army lieutenant but was unable to
assume a combat role because of bad eyesight. With
his film background, he helped produce training
films and conduct public relations for the military.
Reagan later said his experiences in uniform in
World War II first opened his eyes to the defects of
bureaucracy.
During these years, Reagan considered himself a
liberal Democrat, having proudly voted for Franklin
Roosevelt four times, and he supported liberal
causes such as the Americans for Democratic Action
after the war. He described himself later as having
been “a near hopeless hemophiliac liberal.”2
It was during this period, while Reagan served
as head of the Screen Actors Guild—the trade union
1.
Ronald Reagan, “Address at Commencement Exercises at Eureka College,” May 9, 1982, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/
speeches/1982/50982a.htm.
2.
Ronald Reagan, Where’s the Rest of Me? (New York: Dell, 1981), p. 160.
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for Hollywood—that Reagan came face-to-face with
Communist activism and became a staunch antiCommunist. Actor Sterling Hayden, an admitted
member of the Communist Party, later said that
Communism was stopped in Hollywood by “a oneman battalion of opposition named Ronald Reagan.”
He also began to question liberal economic views,
especially the 91 percent income tax rate, which he
saw as a disincentive for work and investment.
Reagan’s increasing interest in politics coincided with his divorce from Jane Wyman in 1948. He
subsequently married actress Nancy Davis, who
ironically had contacted Reagan for help in extricating herself from the false accusation that she was a
Communist sympathizer.
Reagan’s idiosyncratic conservatism
combined forward-looking optimism
with his deep regard for America’s
heritage and the idea of American
exceptionalism.
A major turning point for Reagan came in the
1950s when he signed on to become a spokesman
for General Electric Theater. In addition to introducing the weekly television show, Reagan also
traveled the nation for General Electric, speaking
to GE employees at plants in 38 states. Reagan was
an active reader of some of the early classics of modern conservatism such as Whittaker Chambers’
Witness, Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson,
Fredric Bastiat’s The Law, and F. A. Hayek’s The
Road to Serfdom. Drawing on books and conservative periodicals such as The Freeman and National
Review, Reagan wrote his own speeches on current
issues for his GE plant appearances, later explaining that:
Eventually what happened to me was, because
I did my own speeches and did the research for
them, I just woke up to the realization one day
that I had been going out and helping to elect the
people who had been causing the things I had
been criticizing. So it wasn’t any case of some
mentor coming in and talking me out of it. I did it
in my own speeches.3
Reagan’s contract with GE ended in 1962, the
same year he finally switched parties. In 1964,
Reagan made his first prominent national political appearance with a televised speech on behalf
of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign. The
speech, “A Time for Choosing,” was an overnight
sensation. Although the speech was a bracing conservative attack on liberal policy, it also displayed
Reagan’s manner of presenting his message in nonideological terms:
You and I are told we must choose between a left
or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a
left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to
man’s age-old dream—the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order—or down to the
ant heap of totalitarianism.4
Reagan’s Idiosyncratic Conservatism
This passage from “A Time for Choosing” displays
Reagan’s idiosyncratic conservatism, which combined forward-looking optimism that could at times
be confused with utopianism with his deep regard
for America’s heritage and the idea of American
exceptionalism. His favorite rhetorical image
for America was modified from the classic John
Winthrop sermon from 1630, “A Model of Christian
Charity,” in which Winthrop adapted an image from
the Sermon on the Mount to describe the promise of
the New World as “a shining city on a hill.”5
Reagan also frequently quoted a line from Tom
Paine, one of the most radical figures of the American
Revolution and author of the famous revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense: “We have it on our
power to begin the world over again.”6 George Will,
3.
Quoted in Jules Witcover and Richard M. Cohen, “Where’s the Rest of Ronald Reagan?” Esquire, March 1976, p. 92.
4.
Ronald Reagan, “A Time for Choosing,” October 27, 1964, Heritage Foundation Primary Sources, http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/firstprinciples/primary-sources/a-time-for-choosing-ronald-reagan-enters-the-political-stage.
5.
John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” 1630, http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/charity.html.
6.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1776), http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/paine-common.asp.
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among other conservatives, criticized Reagan for
this, calling Paine’s remark “the least conservative
sentiment conceivable…. Any time, any place, that is
nonsense.”7 Reagan explained in 1965 his reasoning
behind quoting Paine: He thought modern conservatism was now the authentic champion of the best of
the liberal tradition:
The classic liberal used to be the man who
believed the individual was, and should be forever, the master of his destiny. That is now the
conservative position. The liberal used to believe
in freedom under law. He now takes the ancient
feudal position that power is everything. He
believes in a stronger and stronger central government, in the philosophy that control is better than freedom. The conservative now quotes
Thomas Paine, a long-time refuge of the liberals:
“Government is a necessary evil; let us have as little of it as possible.”8
The “city on a hill” image and his fondness for
Tom Paine are not the only signs of Reagan’s optimistic streak. The inscription at his gravesite reads,
“I know in my heart that man is good, that what is
right will always eventually triumph.” But Reagan
was not a utopian; he never believed in the capacity
to perfect human nature through political or bureaucratic interventions. In fact, he was deeply critical
of “experts” and self-appointed “elites” that are the
hallmark of modern bureaucratic government. In “A
Time for Choosing” and many subsequent speeches,
Reagan attacked the idea that “a little intellectual
elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us
better than we can plan them ourselves.”9
Governor Reagan
Time magazine called Reagan’s Goldwater speech
“the one bright spot in a dismal campaign,”10 and
columnist David Broder wrote that the speech was
“the most successful political debut since William
7.
Jennings Bryan.”11 Republican leaders in California
approached Reagan shortly afterward and persuaded him to consider running for governor of California
in 1966. Reagan won the election over incumbent
Democratic Governor Pat Brown by more than a
million votes, demonstrating his crossover appeal to
Democrats and independent voters.
Reagan’s two terms as governor
of California from 1967 to 1975
were a practical demonstration of
the possibilities—and limits—of
conservative governance.
Reagan’s two terms as governor of California
from 1967 to 1975 were a practical demonstration of
the possibilities—and limits—of conservative governance. Early in his first year, he agreed to a large tax
increase to close the budget deficit he inherited when
spending cuts alone were insufficient to balance the
budget. He strenuously opposed President Richard
Nixon’s plan to federalize welfare and establish a
guaranteed annual income and was the only governor who opposed a National Governors Association
resolution in favor of Nixon’s proposal.
After Nixon’s plan was defeated in Congress,
Reagan embarked on his own welfare plan in
California, as California was confronting a welfare
crisis. California’s welfare rolls were growing by
40,000 a month by 1970. While California had 10
percent of the nation’s population, it had 16 percent
of the nation’s total welfare caseload. Unless something was done, Reagan’s finance department told
him, a tax increase would be necessary to meet the
added fiscal burden.
Reagan’s plan required recipients to find jobs
or engage in job training, and it tightened eligibility standards. Reagan’s design worked: The welfare
George Will, “Getting the Liberal Out of Reagan,” The News and Courier, November 2, 1985, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2506&d
at=19851102&id=AXxJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QAsNAAAAIBAJ&pg=2846,361915.
8.Reagan, Where’s the Rest of Me? p. 337.
9.
Reagan, “A Time for Choosing.”
10. “Early Career,” American Experience, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/reagan-career/.
11. Stephen Hess and David Broder, The Republican Establishment: The Present and the Future of the G.O.P. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 254.
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caseload started falling by 8,000 a month. By July
1973, it was nearly 800,000 cases lower than had
been predicted before reform, with a savings of $1
billion (out of a total state budget of about $9 billion at the time). Reagan’s 1970 welfare reform plan
became the blueprint for the widespread and successful state-based welfare reform experiments
of the 1990s that culminated in sweeping welfare
reform on the national level in 1996.
Reagan’s governorship was also notable for
his confrontation with student radicalism on
California’s university campuses and for signing a
law liberalizing abortion (which he later regretted)
and the nation’s first no-fault divorce law.
In 1973, a recovering economy and Reagan’s
spending restraint created a large surplus, which
Reagan wanted to rebate to taxpayers in the form of
a ballot initiative, Proposition 1, that would impose
permanent tax and spending limits on California
government. “Prop. 1” would have limited total state
spending to no more than 7 percent of personal
income in the state (state spending was about 8.75
percent of personal income).
Public employee unions spearheaded the opposition to the initiative, arguing that a state tax and
spending limit would lead to local tax increases,
and the initiative lost in a special election in 1973.
Exit polls showed that two-thirds of the “no” voters thought they were voting against higher taxes.
“It was a victory for political demagoguery,” Reagan
said afterward.12 In hindsight, it is easy to see that
with Prop. 1, Reagan was once again ahead of his
time. (He was also musing aloud at that time about
the desirability of a flat-rate income tax, a leading
conservative issue a generation later.)
Five years after Prop. 1, California passed
Proposition 13 by a landslide. Proposition 13 cut
property taxes in half, imposed Prop. 1’s two-thirds
majority requirement to raise taxes, and launched
the “tax revolt” around the nation.
The 1976 and 1980
Presidential Campaigns
In 1976, Reagan decided to challenge President
Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination. Although Ford was the incumbent Republican
President, he had been appointed rather than elected
to office, and Reagan felt Ford had not fought sufficiently against growing budget deficits and that his
foreign policy of détente was too accommodating to
the Soviet Union. After a hard-fought campaign that
saw Reagan win the majority of votes in states with
direct primaries, Ford narrowly edged out Reagan in
the delegate count—the last major party nomination
fight that was still closely contested going into the
convention.
While Jimmy Carter and other
liberals called for a renewal of
wage and price controls, Reagan
came to embrace “supply-side
economics” as a cornerstone of his
campaign’s economic plan, along with
deregulation, government spending
restraint, and stricter monetary policy
to bring down inflation.
Between 1976 and 1980, Reagan kept in the public eye through a syndicated newspaper column
and daily radio addresses while remaining publicly
undeclared about his plans for 1980. (Reagan wrote
nearly all of his more than 1,000 radio addresses by
himself, it was subsequently learned.) As Reagan
would be 69 years old by election day in 1980, there
was doubt whether he would be a candidate, but
despite an early setback in the Iowa caucuses in
January 1980, he soon emerged as the front-runner
and breezed to the GOP nomination with little difficulty. He selected his most serious rival in the campaign, George H. W. Bush, as his running mate.
The economy had continued to deteriorate under
President Jimmy Carter, with slow growth, high
unemployment, and increasing inflation combining into a phenomenon known as “stagflation” that
conventional Keynesian economic theory could neither explain nor cure. Inflation exceeded 13 percent,
and interest rates topped 20 percent in some cases.
In addition, turmoil in the Middle East roiled global
energy markets, producing a spike in oil prices and
gasoline shortages at the pump.
12. Ronald Reagan, “Reflections on the Failure of Proposition #1: On Spending and the Nature of Government,” National Review, December 7, 1973,
http://old.nationalreview.com/flashback/reagan200406080927.asp.
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While Carter and other liberals called for a
renewal of wage and price controls, Reagan came to
embrace “supply-side economics”—specifically, the
Kemp–Roth proposal for a 30 percent across-theboard reduction in income tax rates—as a cornerstone of his campaign’s economic plan, along with
deregulation, government spending restraint, and
stricter monetary policy to bring down inflation.
In foreign policy, Reagan attacked Carter’s weakness that had led to anti-American revolutions in
Iran and Nicaragua, as well as Soviet adventurism
such as the invasion of Afghanistan. He was also
a strong critic of the Strategic Arms Limitation
Treaty (SALT II), which Carter signed in 1979 but
was forced to shelve following the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan. The seizure and prolonged captivity
of 52 American diplomats in Iran in 1980 added to
Reagan’s critique of Carter’s weakness.
Polls in 1980 found that a large majority of
Americans thought the nation was on the “wrong
track” and were pessimistic about the future.
Reagan broke open a close race with a strong debate
performance against Carter a week before the election, and he went on to score a 44-state Electoral
College landslide.
Reagan’s Return to the Founding
In his inaugural address in 1981, Reagan said:
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems—government is the problem…. It is my intention to curb the size and
influence of the Federal establishment…. It is
no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and
intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government.13
Reagan was the first Republican President since
Calvin Coolidge to make a constitutional critique of
the administrative state. In a 1979 letter to Ben Shaw,
publisher of the Dixon, Illinois, Evening Telegraph
newspaper, Reagan argued: “The permanent structure of our government with its power to pass regulations has eroded if not in effect repealed portions
of our Constitution.”14
As President, Reagan made reaffirming
the founding a central concern,
especially in his appointments to
the judiciary and in the high-profile
public campaign, conducted chiefly
by Attorney General Edwin Meese, on
behalf of restoring the understanding
of the “original intent” of the
Constitution.
Reagan also remarked in his inaugural address
that he intended to reverse the growth of government because it “shows signs of having grown
beyond the consent of the governed.”15 This was one
of the few substantive references to the Declaration
of Independence in modern presidential rhetoric,
but this was not unique for Reagan. One analysis
found that Reagan quoted the American Founders
more often than his five predecessors combined. As
President, Reagan made reaffirming the founding a
central concern not only of his rhetoric, but also of
many of his actions, especially in his appointments
to the judiciary and in the high-profile public campaign, conducted chiefly by Attorney General Edwin
Meese, on behalf of restoring the understanding of
the “original intent” of the Constitution.16
In his farewell address in 1989, Reagan also
included a heartfelt plea for passing along the heritage of the nation’s principles through a renewed
emphasis on civic education:
An informed patriotism is what we want. And are
we doing a good enough job teaching our children
13. Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1981, Heritage Foundation Primary Sources, http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/firstprinciples/primary-sources/reagans-first-inaugural-government-is-not-the-solution-to-our-problem-government-is-the-problem.
14. Ronald Reagan, letter to Ben Shaw, May 10, 1979, in Reagan: A Life in Letters (New York: Free Press, 2003), p. 273.
15. Reagan, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1981.
16. See, for example, Edwin Meese III, “Constitution Day Speech,” in “Returning to Original Meaning: Attorney General Meese Looks to the
Declaration and the Constitution,” September 17, 1985, Heritage Foundation Primary Sources, http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/firstprinciples/primary-sources/returning-to-original-meaning-attorney-general-meese-looks-to-the-declaration-and-the-constitution.
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what America is and what she represents in the
long history of the world? Those of us who are
over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different
America. We were taught, very directly, what
it means to be an American. And we absorbed,
almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions….
But now, we’re about to enter the nineties, and
some things have changed. Younger parents
aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of
America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular
culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer
the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of
getting across that America is freedom—freedom
of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile;
it needs protection.17
President Reagan: Rebuilding America’s
Economy and Winning the Cold War
Reagan’s first priority upon taking office was
reversing the nation’s economic slide. After a protracted political battle in Washington that stretched
late into the summer—and that was interrupted by
an assassination attempt in late March, in which
he was gravely wounded—Reagan achieved modest
spending reductions for one year but also succeeded in passing a 25 percent across-the-board income
tax cut phased in over three years. (A bidding war
with Democrats in Congress who were determined
to block the income tax cut produced a bill with revenue reductions much larger than Reagan proposed.
This fact led to much subsequent misunderstanding
when Reagan agreed to eliminate deductions and
raise some excise taxes the following year in what
was then the largest tax increase in history. Reagan
held the line, however, against raising income taxes.)
Reagan accelerated the deregulation of domestic energy production and launched significant
regulatory reform in several other areas, including
transportation, telecommunications, and finance.
Following a severe recession in 1982, during which
unemployment reached nearly 11 percent, the economy began a sustained boom that lasted for nearly
a decade with falling inflation and interest rates. A
second round of tax reform in 1986 lowered individual rates further, to 14 percent and 28 percent (subsequently undone by Presidents George H. W. Bush
and Bill Clinton). By the time Reagan left office in
1989, the nation had created 20 million new jobs.
Just as Reagan broke with orthodoxy to fix the
economy, he also broke with the conventional wisdom on foreign policy. He summarized his basic
strategy as “peace through strength,” but there
was more to it than that.18 Unlike even previous
Republican Presidents, Reagan thought the United
States could win the Cold War against the Soviet
Union. “My theory of the Cold War,” he told his
national security adviser, Richard Allen, “is: we win,
they lose.”19
Reagan intuitively concluded that the
Soviet Union was weak and potentially
brittle, despite its formidable arsenal
of nuclear weapons, and that an
aggressive strategy of applying
pressure might bring the Cold War to
an end.
Reagan intuitively concluded that the Soviet
Union was weak and potentially brittle, despite its
formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons, and that an
aggressive strategy of applying pressure might bring
the Cold War to an end. But even above material and
strategic considerations, Reagan also conceived the
Cold War as ultimately a moral conflict—a central
dimension that had been subsumed by the détente
policies of the 1970s.
Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union had four
moving parts: an arms buildup to demonstrate to
the Soviets that they could not compete in an arms
17. Ronald Reagan, “Farewell Address,” January 11, 1989, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1989/011189i.htm.
18. Reagan, “A Time for Choosing.”
19. Quoted in Richard V. Allen, “The Man Who Won the Cold War,” Hoover Digest 2000, No. 1 (January 30, 2000), http://www.hoover.org/
publications/hoover-digest/article/7398.
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race; arms negotiations that sought reductions in
arms rather than limiting further buildup as previous arms agreements had held; a global campaign to
spread democracy that included ratcheting up public
criticism of the Soviet Union; and the active support
of anti-Soviet guerilla movements in Afghanistan,
the Far East, Central America, and Africa.
Reagan’s strategy, and especially his rhetoric,
was highly controversial both at home and abroad.
In 1982, Reagan argued in a speech in London that
Soviet Communism was destined “for the ash heap
of history”—a bold reversal of Karl Marx’s prediction
for capitalism.20 In 1983, Reagan called the Soviet
Union “an evil empire”21 and shortly thereafter effectively announced the end of the long-standing nuclear doctrine of “mutual assured destruction” when
he called for the development of ballistic missile
defense, known as the Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI).22
Then, in 1987, after he had begun a series of
productive summit meetings and concluded an
arms treaty with the new Soviet leader, Mikhail
Gorbachev, Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall
and issued a direct challenge: “Mr. Gorbachev—tear
down this wall!”23 His four dramatic summit meetings with Gorbachev were unlike any previous U.S.–
Soviet summits: Reagan insisted upon arguing fundamental principles of democracy and human rights
versus Communist ideology rather than negotiating
narrowly about technical military details and smallbore trade agreements.
Reagan’s strategy was vindicated starting in
late 1988 when Gorbachev publicly repudiated the
“Brezhnev doctrine,” which held that the Soviet
Union would defend socialism everywhere by force
of arms if necessary. Gorbachev’s decision to remove
Soviet troops unilaterally from Eastern Europe
contributed in short order to Eastern European
nations, starting with Poland, throwing off
Communist rule. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall
came down, and in 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved.
Margaret Thatcher later said that “Reagan
won the Cold War without the firing of a shot.”24
Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, a liberal who is
generally no friend of conservatives or Republicans,
wrote of Reagan: “His success in helping finally to
end the cold war is one of the greatest achievements
by any president of the United States—and arguably
the greatest single presidential achievement since
1945.”25
Reagan’s Central Insight
Reagan’s 1982 speech in London about the Cold
War contains a succinct description of his central
insight:
At the same time there is a threat posed to human
freedom by the enormous power of the modern
state. History teaches the dangers of government
that overreaches—political control taking precedence over free economic growth, secret police,
mindless bureaucracy, all combining to stifle
individual excellence and personal freedom.26
Reagan’s conflation of “secret police” and “mindless bureaucracy” in the middle of this sentence
makes clear that he regarded the problem of government power—statism—as a continuum rather than
as a dichotomy. The same principles that animated
Reagan’s Cold War policy also directed his domestic
policy vision.
In his farewell address in 1989, Reagan expressed
both his own essential modesty and his confidence
in the capacities of the American people:
20. Ronald Reagan, “Address to Members of the British Parliament,” June 8, 1982, in “20 Years Later: Reagan’s Westminster Speech,” Heritage
Foundation WebMemo No. 106, June 4, 2002, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2002/06/reagans-westminster-speech.
21. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida,” March 8, 1983,
http://www.reaganfoundation.org/pdf/Remarks_Annual_Convention_National_Association_Evangelicals_030883.pdf.
22. Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on Defense and National Security,” March 23, 1983, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/
speeches/1983/32383d.htm.
23. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on East–West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin,” June 12, 1987, http://www.reaganfoundation.org/
pdf/Remarks_on_East_West_Relations_at_Brandenburg%20Gate_061287.pdf.
24. Margaret Thatcher, “Unfinished Business, New Challenges,” Heritage Foundation Lecture No. 340, September 23, 1991, http://www.heritage.
org/research/lecture/unfinished-business-new-challenges.
25. Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 281.
26. Reagan, “Address to Members of the British Parliament.”
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I won a nickname, “The Great Communicator.”
But I never thought it was my style or the words I
used that made a difference: it was the content. I
wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom
from my brow, they came from the heart of a great
nation—from our experience, our wisdom, and
our belief in the principles that have guided us
for two centuries. They called it the Reagan revolution. Well, I’ll accept that, but for me it always
seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.27
—Steven F. Hayward is Thomas Smith Distinguished Fellow at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland
University in Ashland, Ohio, and the author of The
Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order:
1964–1980 (Prima Publishing, Forum, 2001) and The
Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution:
1980–1989 (Three Rivers Press, 2009).
27. Reagan, “Farewell Address.”
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